Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/467

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A FREAK OF NATURE.
451

"She was of very dark complexion," says he, "short of stature and well proportioned; her hands and feet were small, her nails yellow; she had a beautiful breast. Her tresses were very long, deep black, and coarse as horse-hair, and she had a strong beard. Her forehead was overgrown with hair, down to the bushy eyebrows, which over-shadowed her soft, humid eyes within their border of black lashes.

Fig. 3.

Julia Pastrana.

Her face was made specially hideous by the excessive development of the half-open lips; she spoke with difficulty, and sang mezzo-soprano in Spanish. The parts having the heaviest covering of hair were the shoulders and the hips, the breast and the spinal column. On the limbs the hairiness was greatest on the inner side."

Mr. Darwin recognizes the existence of a constant relation between the hair and the teeth, and cites the deficiency of teeth in hairless dogs. He says that in those exceptional cases in which the hair has been renewed in old age, this has "usually been accompanied by a renewal of the teeth." According to him, the great reduction in the size of the tusks in domestic boars probably stands in close relation with their diminished bristles. Then, after referring to the Burmese family and Julia Pastrana, Mr. Darwin says: "These cases forcibly call to mind the fact that the two orders of mammals—namely, the Edentata and Cetacea—which are the most abnormal in their dermal covering, are likewise the most abnormal by deficiency or redundancy of teeth."